One of the original buildings on campus, the University of North Florida's Skinner-Jones Hall North and South house physics, chemistry, math, statistics and health sciences programs. Students and faculty rallied Wednesday for state funds to update the facility.

Students donning “Hard Hats for Higher Education” lobbied Wednesday to attempt to make sure the University of North Florida gets its slice of the state’s academic funding pie this legislative session.

As rain pelted Skinner-Jones Hall South and North nearby, students petitioned Florida House and Senate leaders to get $9 million to add more laboratories and classrooms in those buildings.

How can the state expect students to be prepared for the future when the laboratories are from the university’s past, said senior and student body president Carlo Fassi.

“We expect that when we are trying to solve what cures HIV, that we are in a laboratory built after we went to the moon,” he said. “That’s what we have — old space we would like to renovate and we would hope that our state Legislature invests in those facilities. ... We are falling behind and we are hoping our legislators aim higher.”

Investing in state universities will benefit the students who use the new laboratories and help the local economy, university President John Delaney said.

“You want to urge the Legislature to invest in things that will have the best return for the state, and quite frankly that’s our college students,” he said. “... On top of that, the simple act of the construction and remodeling puts people to work and that feeds into the local economy.”

Florida’s 2014 legislative session starts Tuesday in Tallahassee. Faced with a drop in enrollment and impacts of the current economy, Delaney said funding has “dried up to a trickle” in recent years for facility renovation and expansion at his university and others.

Florida’s 11 universities have set up a “Hard Hats” campaign to lobby for the $321 million they estimate is needed for priority building projects. Student governments worked with administrators at those universities to have budget rallies Wednesday — Aim Higher Florida Day.

In Jacksonville, students were asked to write about the importance of their educational needs on “Aim Higher” postcards headed to the House and Senate leaders. The project they support would need about $8 million to add a third floor to the 42-year-old Skinner-Jones Hall North for physics, chemistry, math, statistics and health sciences programs. It would also upgrade equipment and use $1 million to renovate Skinner-Jones Hall South.

Faculty association President Gordon Rakita said he doesn’t always agree with students, except when it comes to higher education funding.

“We do agree that we both need the right spaces to do our jobs — you to learn and us to teach,” Rakita said. “What we do is hard and we don’t need to be hampered by substandard facilities.”

The state university’s student government associations are also supporting in-state tuition for veterans and children of undocumented immigrants. Those associations are sponsoring a March 26 “Rally in Tally” to push for the funding issues.